Benjamin West, P.R.A. (Pennsylvania 1738-1820 London)

With some variation in detail, these two drawings and a large drawing in the Pierpont Morgan Library (R.S. Kraemer, Drawings by Benjamin West and his son Raphael Lamar West, The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975, p. 58, no. 104 and pl. 66) include depictions of the same group of figures. In 1975 Kraemer speculated that the Morgan's drawing was related to an immense painting of the Crucifixion which, in 1817, West told Joseph Farington he had drawn in on canvas, but about which he had no further knowledge. In 1817 the artist was 79 and nearing the end of his life and it is fair to assume that the painting was not completed.